


Elephant Colors

by aroceu



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions
Genre: Ambiguity, Gender Identity, Genderfluid Character, Other, Questioning, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 20:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/589559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroceu/pseuds/aroceu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's Neil, isn't he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elephant Colors

**Author's Note:**

> okay so it’s been a while since i played pokemon black and white (the original) but i remember i was entralinking with my brother when i ran into a dude at lacunosa who was like “i dreamed that i’m a girl! but i’m actually a boy!” and WOW ok fic ideas so. finally. here um. yeah. i’m writing this.

She's dreaming again. At least, she thinks she is--she looks down. Maid apron, dress, feels around her hair--bonnet on her hair.   
  
She must be dreaming, because _she_  isn't who this is.  
  
"Nellie!" says her friend, Patrick, and Patrick is the same as he is when she's not dreaming (that is, if this is a dream.) Patrick is beaming and Nellie smiles as he approaches her and he hugs her.  
  
"I was worried where you went!" says Patrick, pulling back. "Where'd you go?"  
  
"I was," says Nellie, and looks around. They're in the middle of the street in Lacunosa, and people are bustling around and Nellie is confused. "I don't know."  
  
Patrick smiles and takes her hand. "Well it's okay," he says, and Nellie is confused again--why is Patrick holding her hand? "C'mon, we should get home!" he says, and Nellie thinks of home like closets filled with dresses and skirts and hairbrushes on dressers and flower-covered beds--  
  
*  
  
Jolting awake, Neil finds himself sweating, gasping in the dark. He looks down at his hands, then at his--yeah, he's in bed, in his red and white striped pajamas as usual, and there's nothing on his head except for his messy black hair which his mom always complains about being too long and he always says,  _Well at least I don't look like a girl_.  
  
He shakes his head and rubs his eyes. He glances out the window, then at his alarm clock, which reads 2:04am. It's ridiculous, because he's been having dreams like this--not the same dream, because sometimes Patrick's in them and sometimes he's not--for the past month. Maybe two months. Maybe three.  
  
(He remembers being six years old and, in a dream, wearing a dress and twirling around and being surrounded by other girls and laughing.)  
  
He thinks of Patrick again, thinks of Patrick holding his hand. His left hand encloses around his right. This isn't the hand he wants Patrick to be holding.  
  
He sighs and flops down back in his bed. _I shouldn't want Patrick to be holding my hand, anyways._  
  
*  
  
She hops downstairs and her mom says, "Breakfast is ready!" and then she looks at Nellie and says, "Oh, don't you look pretty today?"  
  
Nellie giggles, because today she's going to Nimbasa to try out for the tennis team. "I'm not supposed to look pretty, Ma," she says; she's wearing the usual blue tank top and blue skort, her brown hair tied up in a ponytail behind her.  
  
"But you do, sweetie." Her mom comes over to her and wraps Nellie into a hug, and Nellie likes her mom's scent, how her mom can run her fingers through Nellie's long hair. "My little daughter always looks pretty," she says.  
  
\--Nellie stops and then breaks away and says, "But I'm not your," and her voice is deep and she doesn't get it and then she's saying, "daughter," and she's not wearing a skirt anymore, but pants, and her mom says, "You always look pretty to me," and he's so confused and everything is warping and--  
  
*  
  
"Neil! Get up!"  
  
His eyes pop open at the rapping at his door. "Neil!" his mom shouts again, and Neil throws back his covers and mutters, "I heard you the first time!"  
  
His drilbur peeks an eye open. "Get back to sleep buddy," Neil mutters, because drilbur doesn't deserve to suffer the pains of being awake like he does.  
  
Drilbur gets up anyway, rubbing his eyes and looking at Neil. He nudges his hand gently when Neil reaches over him to grab one of his strewn tee shirts on his bed.  
  
"I'm okay," says Neil, when Drilbur looks at him with worried eyes. "It's fine. Go wake skitty up, will you?"  
  
Drilbur sends him those eyes again, but Neil looks pointedly at skitty. Drilbur seems to sigh, and then runs over to the corner of the room where his skitty is curled up and nudges her awake.  
  
"Patrick's been waiting in the kitchen for the past ten minutes!" Neil hears his mom screech again, and flinches.  
  
"You guys wanna say hi to Patrick?" he asks drilbur and skitty, who nod. Neil smiles; he knows drilbur is good friends with Patrick's pansage and skitty has attachment issues with drilbur. He puts on proper clothes--red jacket and blue jeans (and thinks of dresses and tank tops and skirts), and then goes downstairs with his pokemon behind him.  
  
*  
  
"I had the most crazy ass dream last night," Neil is saying, and he's not quite sure when or where this is but he's walking with Patrick toward Opelucid. "That I was a girl, and that--that I was going to try out for the tennis team--"  
  
He looks at Patrick and sees that Patrick is grinning, then Patrick says, "But Neil, this  _is_  your dream, you really  _are_  a girl--"  
  
And then he's on his bike and he's biking except he's wearing a skirt and leggings now and has boobs and is suddenly a she, outside her house and her mom pops out and says, "Nellie, don't forget your running shoes!"  
  
"I have my bike, Ma, why do I need running shoes?" she calls back and her voice sounds sort of distorted like it doesn't know if it belongs to a boy or a girl.  
  
"You need both!" says her mom, but then Nellie hears, "You can't have both, you have to pick one!" and Nellie thinks she likes this better, riding on a bike because it's more fun, it feels more  _her_ \--  
  
*  
  
"Dude," says Neil, shaking his head as he and Patrick walk out of his apartment. He really  _is_  awake now, he's sure of it--that dream a few days ago has confused him so much, but--"I've been having the weirdest dreams lately?"  
  
"You have?" Patrick furrows his eyebrows. "What about?"  
  
Neil looks to him. Patrick's wearing his vest and baggy khaki shorts like he always does, his outfit similar to when they were kids. Neil remembers when they were kids, and smiles--Patrick climbing trees, trying to catch starlies, and Neil laughing at him from below. Neil talking about burrowing into tunnels like drilbur, maybe one day even exploring the entire sewers of Castelia to which Patrick had crinkled his nose and had said, Gross.  
  
Neil shakes his head of the memories, of him and Patrick playing in playgrounds and staying away from girls and Neil looking at them from the corner of his eye, sometimes wishing he could join them--  
  
"Promise me you won't laugh," says Neil.  
  
Patrick's frown deepens. "I'm your best friend, dude, I'm not gonna laugh," he says. "Besides, you saw that time I tried to capture a blitzle and ended up getting shocked two ways to Sunday, instead."  
  
"Yeah," says Neil, laughing lightly at the memory. "Right, it's.."   
  
He bites his lip because it's hard to say, harder than probably Patrick bringing up his getting shocked by the blitzle, and if Patrick hadn't pressed, "It's what?" Neil doesn't think he would've answered.  
  
"I, um," says Neil. "Sometimes, I have these dreams. Where--Where I'm a girl."  
  
Patrick stares at him for a moment. Then he lets out a laugh, a little nervous one.  
  
"Well, it's just a dream, right?" he says. "I mean, like, we all have weird dreams. Sometimes I dream that my leavanny wants to eat me--oh, no, girl, I know you don't," he says when one of his pokeballs rustles at this. He pats it and Neil smiles again, and Patrick looks back up to him.  
  
"I mean," says Patrick. "It doesn't--Like, are you gay or something?" His eyes aren't accusatory, only curious.  
  
But Neil knows that he doesn't need to lie to him. "No," he says firmly, because he doesn't feel gay. He doesn't feel--he knows he isn't. "I know I'm not," he says, and Patrick nods in understanding.  
  
*  
  
"Scrafty! Use Drain Punch!"  
  
Nellie's scrafty dives across the battlefield and punches Patrick's bisharp right in the chest, and his bisharp wobbles before falling to the ground, eyes in spirals. Nellie laughs delightedly as scrafty bounds towards her, and she hugs him.  
  
"What's that now, five-three?" she asks, as Patrick calls his bisharp back.  
  
"Oh, shut up, we still have five months to go before the end of the year," he says. "And by then, I'll have ten wins on you, I  _promise_."  
  
"Yeah, right," Nellie laughs. "We'll see when you pay me three hundred pokedollars."  
  
" _Not_  going to happen," says Patrick, making his way to her side of the court. "You're the one who's going to be paying  _me_  three hundred pokedollars, so I can buy a new bike and some Brycen Man tickets."  
  
"Nuh uh, _I'll_  be getting the money for a tennis racket and Brycen Man tickets," Nellie teases.  
  
Patrick shoots her a grin. "But we're gonna see the new Brycen Man movie, right?"  
  
"Yeah," says Nellie as he reaches for her hand, and their fingers intertwine, and she says, "Yeah, we're gonna see it together--"  
  
*  
  
"I--fuck."  
  
Neil rolls out of his bed and falls on the floor, in a tangle of blankets and clothes. He doesn't even bother looking at the clock, even though it's still pitch black outside. He lies there, feeling pathetic for a moment, and then glances up at the light switch. It seems so far away, and the mirror's nearer--the mirror hardly gave off any light, but.  
  
He manages to disentangle himself from the mess on the ground, despite that he still feels only half asleep. Is this a dream? But it can't be, because he's a boy. He stands up and stares at himself in the mirror--stares at his flat chest, his broad shoulders, his jaw. His hand moves towards his crotch--yeah, definitely still a guy.  
  
Touching himself feels weird. Feels wrong. Feels like--like this isn't him, or, something. He wishes he had different hands, softer hands, and wishes he's touching a different body.  _His_  body, but not--not this body. It doesn't feel--he grips at his chest again, his crotch, and flinches. None of it feels right, or, at the least, himself.  
  
He's jolted back to what he was  _sure_  was a dream--because he's not a girl, isn't named Nellie, right? Patrick's hand around his--hers. He thinks they might've kissed in the dream, but he can't remember. But he can remember how Patrick would feel against him, how Patrick's hand had felt, all rough, and--this is all wrong, looking at himself in the mirror. He doesn't feel like he's looking at himself. He's looking at something different. Someone  _else_.  
  
He goes back to bed, feeling more like a mess than the sheets on his floor.  
  
*  
  
"I," Nellie laughs as they walk down route 23. "I had the weirdest dream last night."  
  
"Really?" Patrick looks at her, but Nellie's too busy calling after her drilbur, who had run off a little too far ahead.  
  
"Drilbur! Don't scare the--mienfoo," she finishes, as drilbur runs into a clearing of mienfoo who scatter immediately. Drilbur clucks in amusement.  
  
"You were saying?" says Patrick, as Nellie sighs.  
  
"What--oh, right," she says. "I had this weird dream, I." She shakes her head. "I don't know where it came from."  
  
Patrick watches at her for a moment. "Well? Aren't you going to tell me what it was?"  
  
"Oh yeah, right, of course," says Nellie. "Well like--don't laugh, okay, but like. I dreamed that I was a dude? But I still had a crush on you."  
  
"What?" Patrick laughs, and Nellie wallops him in the stomach, causing him to cease his laughing and lean over to wheeze instead.  
  
"I told you not to laugh!"  
  
"Sorry." Patrick looks like he was fighting back a grin. "I--does that mean that dream-Nellie was gay?"  
  
"No," says Nellie. "No, I didn't think--" She frowns. "I'm not sure," she finishes. "He didn't--"  
  
"Or at least, a little bit gay," says Patrick, but to Nellie's ears, that doesn't sound right either.  
  
"I'm not quite sure about that," she says.  
  
"Well, no matter," says Patrick, wrapping her in his arms. "You're with me now, right? All mine. One hundred percent girl, and everything."  
  
Nellie looks at him. He's beaming down at her. She glances to her pokemon as well, her drilbur and scrafty, and his pansage, and it looks like they're fading away. Patrick looks like he's fading away.  
  
She clings onto him as tight as she can.  
  
"Yeah," she whispers, hearing only herself. "One hundred percent girl."


End file.
